


and I think it’s gonna be a long, long time

by mochigoo



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, My First Fanfic, Not just a retelling of the first movie, Peter Has a Sister, at least I hope, heavy focus on OC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22213225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mochigoo/pseuds/mochigoo
Summary: “Peter!” Her voice tore past her lips as a shrill yell. Her brother fell to his knees in the grass, sobbing, and Wendy caught up.Peter felt his sister’s hand on his back, and turned to meet her eyes. He saw she was crying too. He saw that she already understood.What happened next happened so fast it exists mostly as a blur in their memories....A silent scream left Wendy’s mouth as the ground dropped from beneath her.(Or, Peter Quill has a twin sister that gets kidnapped by space pirates along with him.)
Relationships: Guardians of the Galaxy Team & Original Female Character(s), Peter Quill & Guardians of the Galaxy Team, Peter Quill & Original Female Character(s), Peter Quill & Yondu Udonta, Yondu Udonta & Original Character(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	1. Life on Mars?

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, so I actually wrote this. Had a fever dream about a week ago, the idea for this hadn’t left my head since lol. My first fic in a lot of years. (Also, past perfect tense is hard but I gave it my best,,)

**Earth, 1988**

Peter had left the Walkman with her.

He’d done it to make her feel better, Wendy knew. When her brother had pressed it into her hand, wordlessly, hands trembling and eyes glistening, she had almost refused. It was his Walkman more than it was hers, always had been ever since their mom had handed that little wrapped gift over to them on their birthday. Peter had torn the balloon-printed wrapping paper open before Wendy had even had the chance to say that, hey, it was her birthday present too. Inside they’d found a shiny, new Walkman, a pair of headphones, and a cassette tape labeled “Awesome Mix”, written in their mother’s handwriting. 

That was nearly a year ago. 

It felt like a lifetime. 

“To share.” Mom had said, and while Wendy wasn’t the type to just give up what _was_ also hers, she could see that Peter had quickly attached his whole heart to that Walkman. She could live with her brother keeping it, at least most of the time, anyway. 

Her mother had smiled, then, back when her smile was still _hers._ Yes, she was still bedridden often, had still shaved her head at that point and had still lost what was, even to a child, a noticeable amount of weight, but her smile had been bright and wide and still reached her eyes, so full of love and _life,_ the way Wendy had always known her mom to be.

The way Wendy wanted to remember her mom being. 

And so she hadn’t gone in. Grandpa had stood, knees slightly bent, in front of where the twins had been sitting in the two chairs facing the door to their mother’s hospital room, with one of his hands on each of their shoulders, squeezing just a little too tight. Mom had been asking for them, he’d said. Grandpa’s voice had sounded too loud and too far away all at once, and Wendy had kept her eyes glued to the hospital floor. The fluorescent lights buzzing lightly overhead had sounded so much louder to her then, as she’d willed her gaze to focus on the shiny, synthetic linoleum tile. The lights reflected off of the flooring, bathing everything in a sickly, yellowish glow. Her vision had begun to blur and her nose had burned. She’d sniffed, quietly, recalling quickly how she hated the smell of hospitals. 

(She would always hate the smell of hospitals.)

Grandpa’s hand had gone.

“Wendy,” Peter’s voice, that time. He’d taken her hand, limp, in his, his grip firm but gentle. He’d pulled, just a little. “Come on.”

His voice had sounded how Wendy felt, and Wendy hadn’t looked up.

Then, Peter’s hand had gone, and was replaced by a small, rectangular object. Plastic. Hard. Wendy looked up, then. 

_The Walkman._

Removing the headphones from around his neck, Peter had handed those to her, too. There had been so much she wanted to say in that moment but her throat had felt like it was swollen shut and her head like it was full of static or cotton. Fuzzy. 

~~_You keep it._ ~~

~~_I’m sorry._ ~~

In a moment of courage, Wendy had met her brother’s eyes and saw that he’d already understood, because Peter was good like that. She’d also seen that his black eye looked worse, somehow. A couple of older boys at school had smushed a frog with a stick, she’d recalled, and Peter had attempted to _bring them to justice_ for it. He’d landed a good hit directly on one of their noses, the aftermath of which left Peter with a swollen, purplish bruise just under his left eye. Under different circumstances, she’d have smiled thinking about it.

The moment had passed as quickly as it had come, and she’d dropped her gaze again.

* * *

> _It's a God-awful small affair,_

> _To the girl with the mousy hair,_

> _But her mummy is yelling no,_

> _And her daddy has told her to go…_

“Life on Mars?,” David Bowie, 1971. Wendy closed her eyes and breathed in slowly, shakily, through her nose, focusing on the music streaming through the headphones. To Peter, music was comfort, a light in the dark whenever things got bad. Which, lately, was all the time. For her, though, music was catharsis. A way to release all of the feelings she’d pent up, a reflection of how she was feeling. 

She didn’t know what “Life on Mars?” was about, really, the lyrics would be confusing for anyone, let alone an almost-8-year-old. But it sounded how she felt. Listless, lost, a little lonely. Scared.

Disappointed in herself. Guilty.

Underneath it all, there was longing. Longing for _before._ Before mom got sick, before she and Peter had to live with Grandpa, before they only saw mom when they visited her in the hospital. Back when mom could still dance and play and sing along to her songs, loud and joyful and unashamed with her soft, lilting Missouri twang, like she should be. 

Wendy was scared. She was too scared to go into that room to see her mother stuck in that bed, gaunt and pale and so, so frail, barely able to reach out her hand to hold. That wasn’t the version of her mom Wendy wanted to remember, however much she might hate herself for it. 

Suddenly, she was jerked from her thoughts. 

_Peter was screaming._

Almost robotically, she moved the headphones from her ears to around her neck and _listened_.

...

_beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep_

The doctor rushed past her and through the doorway to her mother’s room, and _Peter was still screaming, and the heart monitor only had the one beep._

She watched enough TV to know what that meant. 

Her chest started to burn and she let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. It came out more like a strangled sob. 

Suddenly, a shoe came through the doorway that she wasn’t aware she’d been making her way toward, almost nailing her in the side of the head. Peter’s shoe, Wendy realized, attached to Peter’s leg, attached to Peter, who was being carried kicking and screaming out into the waiting area by their Grandpa. 

He set Peter down on his feet, his hands firm on the boy’s shoulders.

“Listen to me. You… you have to stay here. Please?”

He turned toward Wendy. 

(Years later, the look on his face in that moment would remain clear in her memory. The face of a father who had just lost his daughter.)

“Okay?” Grandpa said, and retreated, still facing them, into their mother’s room. A beat passed, and he turned away.

Peter ran, then, and Wendy followed, Walkman in hand, headphones beating against her chest where she had them around her neck. Past the blood roaring in her ears, she could hear the next song starting up, faintly audible through the small speakers. 

> _O-o-oh child,_

> _Things are gonna get easier…_

The Five Stairsteps, 1970. One of her mother’s absolute favorites.

Wendy was crying again, tears clouding her vision once more. Ahead of her, she heard the exit doors slam open as Peter burst through them. She wasn’t far behind, lungs and throat burning.

“Peter!” Her voice tore past her lips as a shrill yell.

Her brother fell to his knees in the grass, sobbing, and Wendy caught up.

Peter felt his sister’s hand on his back, and turned to meet her eyes. He saw she was crying too. He saw that she already understood.

(Later, when they’re both older, he would realize Wendy would probably always already understand. Probably better than anyone else. It’s a twin thing.)

What happened next happened so fast it exists mostly as a blur in their memories. 

Just as Wendy opened her mouth to say _something,_ the wind suddenly began to whip around them as the two were bathed in a blinding white light. They both broke their gaze then, blinking and squinting up into… whatever it was, they couldn’t see past the glare. Wendy’s fist clenched, white-kuckled, onto the back of Peter’s flannel shirt, as she looked down at him and shouted. Her voice, though, was completely drowned out by the deafening sound of whatever was above them. The sound was felt more than heard, a hard pressure in the twin’s ears accompanied by a buzz.

A silent scream left Wendy’s mouth as the ground dropped from beneath her.

Glancing downwards, then towards Peter, and then back down again, she realized that the ground had not, in fact, suddenly gotten lower. Instead, perhaps more frightening than what she’d previously assumed, she and her brother were being lifted into the air.

For the third time that night, the twins’ met eyes.

Wendy tightened still her hold on Peter’s shirt.   
  


* * *

Joseph Quill came charging through the same double doors his only grandchildren had come through just minutes before, and the world outside was quiet, save for the chirping of crickets and the rustling of leaves in the wind. His eyes, puffy and red, frantically scanned the open field. 

He called for them, loudly, once, twice, then three times. Five time. Seven times. He ran forward. 

Something deep in his soul ached, and somehow he knew he wouldn’t see them again, the same way he knew before she did that Meredith would pass tonight. 

(20-some years later, when he himself would die of a heart attack, he would once again be proven right.)

Standing alone in the middle of the clearing, Joseph Quill put his face in his hands and cried for the second time that night.

  
  



	2. Barracuda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s no updating schedule for this, but I was hit with inspiration!!! Also cus I had time for COVID-19 related reasons lol. 
> 
> Keep in mind I typed this on my phone since I don’t have my laptop and enjoy!!

**26 Years Later**

Recalling the first time she’d ever visited Xandar, Wendy figured there’d always been something about the planet that made her feel out of place.

Given the law-abiding, or, some would say, uptight nature of Xandar’s people, it stands to reason that the Ravagers’ visits were kept few and far between. This, as well as the fact that she and Peter had been somewhere around 9 at the time so Wendy’s knowledge of the galaxies and the planets and all the people on the planets was, to put it lightly, limited, left her unsure of what to expect. All she had known at that point was that they were going to a planet called Xandar to collect a payment, as well as that the first mate, Kraglin, was a Xandarian and not a human like her or Peter, although he could’ve fooled her. 

She’d reasoned, then, since Kraglin certainly _looked_ human, that maybe Xandar would be something like Terra, too. So, she’d used her best puppy-eyed look on Yondu, which he said didn’t work on him even though it definitely did, and managed to get him to agree to bring her and Peter planetside. In her young mind, Xandar would be the taste of home that, hopefully, would quell the pangs of homesickness she’d been getting. 

Needless to say, it hadn’t been. 

Instead, she’d felt more out of place there than she’d thought she’d felt anywhere before. Maybe it had been because Xandar wasn’t like Terra in more ways than it was, or maybe it had been because of the thinly-veiled look of disdain on the bureaucrat’s face, apparent to her even then, at her age. 

_“Uppity jackass,”_ Kraglin’d said. _“Like he weren’t the one what hired us to do his dirty work for’im in the first place.”_

Glancing pointedly over her shoulder at the Xandarian woman who’d been eyeing her warily for what had to have been the past 5 minutes, Wendy felt that sentiment. The woman, upon meeting Wendy’s eyes, quickly averted her own. 

Wendy snorted.

“Uppity jackass.” She echoed, quietly.

What, did the lady think she was going to pickpocket someone? Scoffing at the idea, Wendy rolled her eyes and leaned forward to rest her elbows on the glass railing of the platform, looking down at the sunlight reflecting off the water feature below. 

Please. She wasn’t a kid anymore. 

The beeping of the nearly forgotten Holo-pad in her hands pulled Wendy from her thoughts, and she looked down at it to see exactly what she’d hoped: A picture of an old, old man, the word ‘WANTED’ bolded over top of it. Eyeing the display, she committed a few key details to memory ( ~~thin, grey-haired, balding, tacky sunglasses, 12,000 unit bounty on his head…~~ ) before lifting the Holo-pad to scan the crowd. 

_Bingo._

The pad zoomed in on and enhanced its view of said old, old man, visible on the platform directly across from Wendy, walking arm-in-arm with a much younger woman. Wendy noted the silver band around his ring finger. 

“Where’s your wife, grandpa?” She muttered to no one in particular, before shutting off the pad’s display and stowing it in her jacket pocket. 

She looked back to where the old man had been seconds before. 

“Shit.”

He was gone, and, honestly, that’s what she gets for half-assing and not paying attention. Kicking herself internally, Wendy made her way as quickly as possible to the opposite platform, her eyes scanning the crowds of passerby as she did her best to weave through them. How far could he have gotten, anyway? She turned away for barely 5 seconds, and he was, what, like 90 years old? 

Just as her eyes locked onto the glint of gold-rimmed sunglasses and wisps of silvery hair heading into an upscale bar, she felt the Holo-pad in her pocket vibrate. 

“‘Blue Asshole’ is calling you.” An automated voice sounded from her earpiece. Wendy groaned, but, after a short internal debate, decided the shit she’d get for not answering wouldn’t be worth it. 

Anyway, Yondu hardly ever called unless it was important. Or unless it had something to do with Peter. 

Or both.

She wondered which it would be this time as she held a finger to the device in her ear, activating the voice-control. 

“Answer.”

The call pinged to life, and Wendy heard that all-too familiar accent on the other end as soon as it did. 

“Where you at, girlie?”

“Nice to hear from you too.” 

“I asked you-“

“I’m on Xandar, like I said I would be when I left.” She said it more like a question than a statement. 

On the other end of the call, Yondu humphed. 

“Y’heard from yer brother?”

“Not since I left,” So this was a Peter-call, then, Wendy thought. She was standing outside of the bar, now. “I’m kind of in the middle of something, actually, so-“

“N’ what’s that?” Yondu’s tone made it clear he was in a mood, but Wendy didn’t feel like dancing around it.

“Having lunch with fucking Nova Prime.”

She heard the Ravager captain growl.

“Xandar is easy picking for people with bounties on‘em,” She quickly continued. “You know how these big wigs are. They act squeaky clean and high-and-mighty, but they’re the ones that got some of the biggest prices on their heads. They think they’re untouchable.” 

Silence. 

“What? It’s just a little freelance work, for extra cash, y’know? I’ve done it before and the Nova Corps hasn’t gotten me on-“

“Pete took off last night, unexpected-like. Didn’t tell no one.”

“Didn’t tell me. Don’t you usually hide a tracker somewhere on the Milano?”

“S’like I said, he left unexpected-like, real early hours of the mornin’. Didn’t know to put one on’im. Boy musta found the last one cuz we ain’t gettin’ a signal.”

He either thought she knew something or that Peter was with her, Wendy figured. 

“I’m assuming he’s not answering your calls?” 

Wendy took Yondu’s noncommittal noise to be one of affirmation. 

“Like I said, haven’t heard from him. He’s a grown man, it’s not like he checks in with me every time he picks his nose or whatever.” 

Yondu grunted.

“Keep me posted, girlie.” 

“Fine, sure.”

“Girl-“

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything, Yondu.”

“You better.”

With that, the captain ended the call. 

Wendy felt much less interested in the 12,000 unit old man than she had been 5 minutes ago. 

She touched a finger to her earpiece.

“Call Starmunch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what u think!! Writing Yondu was difficult, not just trying to capture his speech mannerisms but also cus I didn’t want to go too heavy on writing his accent. But I didn’t wanna have nothing for it, so.
> 
> Also!! Peteys comin in the next one, stay tuned

**Author's Note:**

> \- I’m tossing in some new songs n using them as chapter titles!!


End file.
